Helping a friend today (watching his business while he went to the doctor) and he turned on the pump in his pond when I arrived to get the ice off the pond. The pump is at the bottom of the pond and pushes water to the surface (I did take a temp reading on the water shooting up and it was 39º compared to 32º on the surface). It took about 2-3 hours to clear the ice on about half the pond.

When enough water was open I decided to try my 2wt rod I keep in the truck.
Only took one cast (and a long wait for the fly to get deep) to get a 'gill's attention.

Here in Ohio the license year is March 1 to Feb 28, so I'm still on the 2012 license. I think they did the year that way because of hunting licenses - many game seasons last into Feb and both hunting and fishing licenses share the same expiration date.
What I don't like is that you can no longer buy the license ahead of the date. New licenses no longer go on sale until Mar 1. Something to do with the new computer based license sales. The good thing is that I can now buy my licenses online and print them from my home computer.